FreeBSD Security Information

Introduction

FreeBSD takes security very seriously and its developers are
constantly working on making the operating system as secure as
possible. This page will provide information about what to do in
the event of a security vulnerability affecting your system

The FreeBSD Security Officer provides security advisories for
-STABLE Branches and the Security Branches.
(Advisories are not issued for the -CURRENT Branch,
which is primarily oriented towards FreeBSD developers.)

The -STABLE branch tags have names like stable/10.
The corresponding builds have names like FreeBSD
10.1-STABLE.

Each FreeBSD Release has an associated Security Branch.
The Security Branch tags have names like releng/10.1.
The corresponding builds have names like FreeBSD
10.1-RELEASE-p4.

How to update your system

For users that have previously installed a binary version of FreeBSD
(e.g., 11.2 or 10.4),
commands:

# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install

If that fails, follow the other instructions in the security
advisory you care about.

Note that the above procedure is only for users who have
previously installed a binary distribution. Those who have
built from source will need to update their source tree to
upgrade.

Supported FreeBSD releases

Each release is supported by the Security Officer for a limited
time only.

The designation and expected lifetime of all currently supported
branches
and their respective releases
are given below. The Expected EoL (end-of-life)
column indicates the earliest date on which support for that
branch or release will end. Please note that these dates may be
pushed back if circumstances warrant it.

Older releases
are not supported and users are strongly
encouraged to upgrade to one of these supported releases:

Branch

Release

Type

Release Date

Expected EoL

stable/12

n/a

n/a

n/a

December 31, 2023 (anticipated)

releng/12.0

12.0-RELEASE

n/a

n/a

12.1-RELEASE + 3 months

stable/11

n/a

n/a

n/a

September 30, 2021

releng/11.2

11.2-RELEASE

n/a

June 28, 2018

11.3-RELEASE + 3 months

In the run-up to a release, a number of -BETA and -RC releases
may be published for testing purposes. These releases are only
supported for a few weeks, as resources permit, and will not be
listed as supported on this page. Users are strongly discouraged
from running these releases on production systems.

The FreeBSD support model

Under the current support model, each major version's stable branch
is explicitly supported for 5 years, while each individual point
release is only supported for three months after the next point
release.

The details and rationale behind this model can be found in the
official
announcement sent in February 2015.